A Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) is an excellent degree to help you move ahead in a healthcare management career, and it is sometimes pursued as a dual degree. If you are interested in pursuing this particular degree, you may be interested in finding out what other kinds of degrees are often paired with it, and what specific career directions you can go in with those degree pairings.
The Master of Healthcare Administration Paired with an MBA
One degree you will often see paired with a healthcare administration masters is the Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. A typical MBA prepares you for a business management career, but if you tie it into an MHA degree, you can focus on gaining business management skills with a healthcare focus. If you are especially interested in the business part of healthcare, this could be a good duo for you to pursue. The MBA will give you opportunities to learn more about finances and accounting that will help you in different management settings, such as administrating a hospital or other healthcare facility, or a whole network of medical facilities. A dual degree like this will provide chances to study leadership skills as well as marketing, information management, healthcare policy and ethics, legal issues pertaining to healthcare, and more.
MSN and MPH as Other Dual Options to Explore
Among other graduate programs you can explore in combination with a healthcare administration degree are the Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) and the Master of Public Health (MPH) degrees. The MSN is the degree you would pursue if you wanted to get an advanced practice nursing degree, such as a nursing practitioner or nursing specialist job. Doing a dual program with an administration degree would help prepare you to become a nurse manager, someone with an exciting combination of skills.
The MPH degree prepares students to work in the important area of public health, which focuses on things that matter to the health of specific communities and populations. If you have an interest in working in areas such as international/global health, biostatistics, epidemiology, or other public health issues, then an MPH degree can be a good direction to pursue. Combining this degree with the healthcare administration degree will help prepare you to become an administrator in public healthcare areas.
That seems to be the main advantage to any of these or other dual options: the chance to combine a specific healthcare skill set with coursework that trains you in leadership and management. Whether you choose these combinations or others (such as a combination of healthcare administration and information technology) the dual option gives you a chance to study complementary or inter-disciplinary fields at the same time, sometimes completing the two combined degrees more quickly than you could complete them separately. Keep in mind that dual programs have their challenges as well as their advantages. But a dual degree program of the MHA with either an MBA, MSN, MPH, or other similar degree could help open the door to higher level and better paying positions in your chosen healthcare field.